Abstract.
In search of the formative principles underwriting locomotor-respiratory coupling, we reanalyzed and modeled the data collected by Siegmund and coworkers (1999) on the synchronization of respiration during rowing. Apart from the frequency doubling in respiration reported earlier, detailed time-resolved spectral analyses revealed decreasing stability of entrainment close to abrupt changes in frequency relations as well as switches in the relative phase between respiration and locomotion. A single physiological, albeit mechanically constrained, quantity sufficed to explain the observed frequency and phase locking phenomena: the effective value of oxygen volume in the lungs. The cyclic abdominal pressure modulates the self-sustaining rhythmic respiration, modifies the total lung pressure, and causes (local) maxima at frequency ratios between movement and respiration that are composed of small integers. Hence, optimizing the effective oxygen volume can be seen as the mechanism that drives respiration to synchronize with locomotion.
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Acknowledgements The contribution of the second author was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), grant # 425 – 202–01. We would like to thank Gunter Siegmund and David Sanderson for the fruitful discussions and for providing the experimental data that inspired the present study.
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Daffertshofer, A., Huys, R. & Beek, P. Dynamical coupling between locomotion and respiration. Biol. Cybern. 90, 157–164 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-004-0462-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-004-0462-x